There is a saying, derived from Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War” that goes, “If you know both yourself and your enemy, you can win a hundred battles without a single loss.”

President Obama recently announced that he would be sending in more troops to Afghanistan. Allegedly, this decision is to help General Stanley McChrystal continue with the War on Terror in Afghanistan. Although this decision seems logical – a stronger force leads to a quicker victory. However, one must remember Sun Tzu’s words, and be sure to include one’s knowledge of the enemy as well as one’s knowledge of oneself in determining the strategy for war.

When doing so, one finds that an increase in troops is not what either the U.S. or Afghanistan needs at the moment. Instead, it is not only a waste of money, but also unnecessarily risks American soldier’s lives.

First, one needs to understand the stated goal of the War in Afghanistan. This goal has 3 main parts: to capture Al-Qaeda leaders; to destroy the organization of Al-Qaeda; and finally, to remove the Taliban from power.

Alongside this goal stands the overarching goal of the War on Terror: to eliminate most terrorism from this world, and prevent its re-emergence.

Are more troops really going to help with these goals? After some research, one finds that the answer is, quite simply, no.

Since the Taliban and other insurgent groups are religious organizations, their support is very much ideological. As a Guardian headline proclaimed in 2005, “Al-Qaida is now an idea, not an organisation.” The same can apply to the Taliban.

Now, the military is used to fighting armies, and cutting off their physical resources. But how does one go about fighting an idea? One thing is certain – extra troops are not needed. This is affirmed by Norm Cohen, the executive director of the Coalition for Peace and Justice.

“History has proven that military force is highly ineffective when it comes to dealing with terrorist groups,” Cohen writes. “The RAND Corporation reviewed 40 years of actions opposing terrorist groups, and determined that only 7 percent of the terrorist groups were defeated by military force.”

In fact, sending extra troops can have quite the opposite effect when it comes to fighting terrorist organizations: it can spur hatred against the U.S., fueling the terrorist recruitment efforts.

Eliminating the top Al-Qaeda leaders and destroying the so-called organization can also be accomplished without extra troops. According to Cohen, policing, intelligence, and politics have proven to be very effective in dealing with terrorism in the past.

The other parts of the War in Afghanistan’s aim are to eliminate the Taliban’s power, once and for all.

To stop a leak, one needs to find its source. Similarly, to eliminate an enemy’s power, finding the source is key. In this case, the source is a network of fundamentalist schools.

For many children, the only source of education is through madrassas, many of which have been taken over by fundamentalist groups, which teach children how to fight the Western World, rather than math and science. From these schools, terrorist leaders are able to get legions of supporters who are willing to sacrifice themselves to support their cause.

Greg Mortenson, a former mountain climber who now heads the Central Asia Institute, an organization which builds balanced schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan, has spent many years living with the common people of these lands. He witnessed the power of fundamentalist madrassas himself, calling them in his book “Three Cups of Tea” the “factories of jihad.”

He goes on to describe how fast these schools pop up.

“Calling Wahhabi madrassas beehives is exactly right,” Mortenson says. “They’re churning out generation after generation of brainwashed students and thinking twenty, forty, even sixty years ahead to a time when their armies of extremism will have the numbers to swarm over Pakistan and the rest of the Islamic world.”

Mortenson believes that increasing the U.S.’s military presence in Afghanistan does nothing to stop these schools, and only gives the students reasons to believe that it is their duty to fight the Western World. Instead, Mortenson suggests taking the path that he has started: building balanced schools that offer a better alternative to the madrassas.

For this to be more effective, Mortenson stresses educating women. He argues, “if you educate a boy, you educate an individual, but if you educate a girl, you educate a community.”

Finally, a troop surge does nothing to prevent the growth of a another Taliban in the future. Terrorism thrives on a weak government, and as long as the government of Afghanistan does not have proper control on the nation, terrorism could easily reappear.

“You can kill Taliban forever because they are not a finite number,” McChrystal said to the New York Times.

Therefore, the U.S. must battle the Taliban another way: by making the Afghani government stronger. This can be done by getting the Afghani people to trust the government. Humanitarian aid efforts by the U.S. governments can help build this trust without the use of extra troops.

Overall, an increase in troops in Afghanistan, as outlined in Obama’s plan, does virtually nothing to help us accomplish the goal of the war. It is possible, albeit by taking an alternative approach, to lower the power of terrorist groups in Afghanistan, and thus accomplish what we intended to in this war. Therefore, the only thing an increase in troops does do, is risk the lives of Americans.